Crash!

Here's a sequence of shots from a recent dual slalom race. This is a good example of what not to do when the guy in front crashes. I'm in orange.

First a couple of shots during my qualifying run.





I qualified in the top half of my bracket which is pretty good. Unfortunately they rearranged the brackets before the head to head race and I got bumped back a few spots. This meant that I didn't have lane choice. The guy I was racing (16 yo kid actually) choose the fast lane which meant I was going to have to pass him at the merge (where the two side by side tracks come together as one).

Follow the sequence. I'm in back looking into the corner and setting up for a "Low-High" pass. That's where you come in to the corner low and try to body check the guy you're passing by exiting high. Remember I'm looking low into the corner, so I have no idea what the other rider is doing on the high line. Watch what happens:


















Ooof. It looks bad but all I got out of it was a little scratch on the elbow. Unfortunately the other racer was able to get up faster than me and managed to cross the line first. Oh well, that's racing. What I learned is that I need to keep an eye on the other racer and the corner. If I had know he was going to fall, I could have braked and made a safe pass while he was on the ground.

Christine's Silversmithery.

If you were a casual observer of this blog you might think our lives revolve solely around biking, Jamie, and stomping around in the woods. Well, that's a big part of what we do, but there is more. For the past few years Christine has been taking a jewelry design class. She's currently working on a large serving spoon and fork. Here's a few recent shots of her in the studio:

Hammering and forming:


Annealing:


Works in Progress:



More to come...

Trip to TN to visit the Grandparents!

Well, I had a birthday this past week. I hit the big 35. Seems like a nice round number. Maybe it means I'm all grown up.... Naw, couldn't possibly. Well, for my birthday, my parents bought us round trip tickets to TN. So we loaded up the duffel bag with an impossible amount of crap and jumped on the 2 hour flight to Nashville. From there is was a 2 hour drive to the mountain. Much better than a 10 hour drive from Naptown. Jamie was a little angel for the flight and not too bad on the car ride.

One of the points of our visit was to get a four generation photograph with Jamie, Dad, Grandpa and great Grandpa, so on Friday we went to Sears to get our pictures taken. Jamie thought the photographer lady was crazy. She kept making obnoxious silly faces and loud noises, none of which Jamie much appreciated.





Yeah, that was about the best we could do. Pretty sad, huh?

Back home, Jamie was all smiles.

Here he is in his "Sunday, go to church" kilt:




with Ma's horses Cherokee "Cheeky" and Cino






Saturday, Christine and I did a nice long hike at Frozen Head State Park. No pictures, but here's a map:



Sunday Shawn came up for a visit and we hiked to the top of the mountain and descended via a new oil pipeline right of way. It was quite steep.

Monthly update

Seems like all I can manage these days is a monthly update of ye ol' blog. Alas! I've been super busy lately. First I went to a tribology (the study of friction) conference in San Diego, CA, then a funding review meeting in Gainesville, FL. It's always a major crunch to get a years worth of data analyzed, condensed, and thrown into a 30 minute PowerPoint presentation. After that was over, we packed up and went to TN to visit the grandparents. So basically, I've been going somewhere or getting ready to go somewhere nonstop for the last month. I did manage to take lots of pictures everywhere I went, so let the fun begin...

We'll start in San Diego: Due to a stroke of luck, I was there for the big fires. The city was filled with smoke and haze so thick that you couldn't breath and when you blew your nose, you were left with black boogers. Nice.

In no particular order, sights from San Diego:

Wrought Iron:


The old hotel on Coronado


The old hotel on Coronado


Panorama showing the smoke. (Click for Full Resolution version)


Night Skyline from Coronado



Now onto Gainesville: Okay I didn't actually take any pictures of Gainesville. As far as I could tell, it was a godforsaken place. But I did go to San Augustine, the oldest settlement in North America. I was a little disappointed in what I found there, like most everything in FL, it had been, for lack of a better word, Disneyfied. All the old buildings had been converted to shops selling the fudge, ice cream, and stupid hats so typical of a tourist town. You really had to look pretty close and peel back the layers to find any true old world charm. Here's what I came up with:













Some color, just 'cause: